WHO LET IN THE ARGIES?

On the fifth anniversary of the invasion why the Foreign Office was deceived

THE FRANKS Committee has matured with age. Five years have now passed since the events which led to its production. Yet its famous exoneration remains a riddle: We would not be justified in attaching any criticism or blame to the present Govern- ment [for the invasion] on 2 April 1982.' These words were greeted with relief by many, and raised eyebrows only among a few sceptics. Today, they look threadbare. We now know that the invasion was long in the planning, that London was duped and that, as the crisis approached, bad deci- sions were built on poor intelligence. Yet tax a Franks Committee member on the exonera- tion and a smile will cross his face. 'Read it again, dear boy,' he will say. 'Read the words carefully.' The more they are read, the more im- penetrable the detective story becomes. The cul- prit seems to elude read- er and author alike. The invasion on 2 April, says the text, over and over again for emphasis. Attention is thus di- verted from the pukka invasion planned by Vice-Admiral Lombardo, and projected for May-July 1982. It also diverted attention from Admiral Anaya's covert operation against South Georgia (secret even from his own staff) which went wrong and precipitated the debacle of 2 April. These are nowhere mentioned, though they had been investi- gated by the Argentine Rattenbach Com- mission in late 1982 and the CIA could have supplied Franks with a copy. The invasion was brought forward to April by the Argentine navy because of the South Georgia incident and the threat of British submarines. The date, 2 April, was chosen at the last minute because of the weather, like D-Day. By thus limiting its discussion to the invasion date, Franks was able to find it unreasonable to 'blame' the British Government for not predicting or preventing it. It was an extraordinary sleight of hand.

The Franks report is full of such verbal games, dotted about for historians to puz- zle over. But then its author knew that the key to any inquiry is not answers but questions. He insisted on the widest possi- ble remit, so he could fine-tune his ques- tions to the political climate of the moment and avoid discord among his members.

The climate, even in January 1983, was still one of post-war triumph. As such the report was a political document and one of great Establishment dexterity. It is the more intriguing that those who have spoken to Franks since find him quite unsurprised by to others drawing different conclusions from his published sources.

It is these sources that make the Franks report seem more valuable with each year that passes. The first 72 of its 106 pages are a barely coded exposé of the inner work- ings of British government. Every taboo is broken. Civil servants are specifically iden- tified with policy recommendations and lines of argument. The careful student can now work out who is the 'friendly embas- sy', the 'separate intelligence source', even the British secret service agent in Buenos Aires. The wrist-slapping is the sharper for being genteel: 'We regret that the Prime Minister . . . did not receive a prompt response.' An omitted Cabinet Office meeting 'could have been advantageous and fully in line with Whitehall practice'. Franks never condemns or blames, he 'is surprised at' or merely 'notes'.

offers such phrases as escape hatches for his victims: of course, says the Foreign Office, we would never do anything 'irrespective of the views of Ministers'. Yet the seeds of doubt have been carefully sown in the minds of the jury.

The Foreign Office still gets a dreadful press over the Falklands. It was assumed to have willed by negotiation what Galtieri took by force. It failed to warn the Govern- ment of what was about to happen. Its ministers had to resign. Besides, everyone knows that diplomats are pro-foreigner. Some of the charges stick, though ironi- cally they are ones for which Franks offers absolution. The Foreign Office's handling of the South Georgia incident was a case study in poor crisis management. Intelli- gence failed to see through the Constanti- no Davidoff deception. Diplomats dis- counted intercepts of Argentine navy movements from HMS Endurance because its captain, Nick Barker, was known to be lobbying to save his ship.

As tension mounted, British diplomats in Buenos Aires and London fell into the old trap: they assumed the 'enemy' diplo- mats with whom they were dealing were reasonably in touch. From the start of March 1982, the Argentine foreign minis- try had no leverage over the junta and even less over the navy's invasion planners. Its senior officials were appalled when told of Operation Rosario on 26 March. But then the Foreign Office has always been bad at `reading' dictatorships: it thinks too well of the world.

As March progressed, British diplomats believed that moderates in Argentina would restrain the militants, provided Bri- tain did nothing provocative. Yet it was party to the extraordinary Ministry of Defence decision on 20 March to send Endurance from Port Stanley on its three- day mission to South Georgia, supposedly to arrest the scrap-metal workers.

This move contrived to be both provoca- tive and inadequate for the task. It was certain to produce an Argentine escala- tion, which it promptly did in the form of a frigate. Yet Endurance was committed to possible conflict, underarmed and with no plan for eventual submarine or other rein- forcement. On any showing, it was an atrocious decision. This is not hindsight. A desperate message sent by the British defence attaché in Buenos Aires shows that plenty of participants sensed it at the time. We now know that this decision caused the 2 April invasion.

The Foreign Office also omitted to recommend the normal prelude to armed defence of territory, a public ultimatum that force would be met with force. In- stead, the curious suggestion emerged on 31 March that Mrs Thatcher should get President Reagan to issue it for her. Argentine navy 'doves' (of whom plenty existed even in March 1982) insist to this day that an unequivocal threat of task force retaliation from London could have fore- stalled Anaya and the junta in the final days before the invasion. They were always nervous about British nuclear submarines. Lombardo had warned Anaya that the submarine deployment would end navy operations and Anaya had agreed — wit- ness the retreat after the Belgrano sinking.

Once news of the Gibraltar submarine mission had leaked on 29 March, a forceful announcement of its rules of engagement would have caused turmoil in the invasion planning team in Puerto Belgrano. Even without intelligence of this team, a British declaration would have made sense. As it was, the absence of an ultimatum encour- aged Buenos Aires' belief that Britain would not respond militarily to an invasion.

But what of the central charge, that the Foreign Office had a 'house policy' on the Falklands that • was tantamount to treachery? Of the existence of such a policy there can be no doubt. The Foreign Office has its view on issues as wide-ranging as the Common Market, the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Commonwealth.

The question is: was the policy a good ,one? From the start of talks with Argentina under the 1965 United Nations directive, it was conditioned by two bald facts. The first was the dedication of every Argentine government, indeed almost every living Argentinian, to getting the islands back. The second was the prohibitive cost of stopping them by force, if matters ever reached that pass.

Britain had no deep interest in the Falklands and had deserted its 'citizens' in similar inconvenient circumstances else- where in the world (such as on Diego Garcia). Common sense suggested • a negotiated handover to Argentina — com- mon sense reinforced by the reluctance of successive ministers of both parties to fight the Treasury for the price of a new runway to improve the islands' defences. Given the two straightforward options — Fortress Falklands or eventual transfer — all agreed that transfer was preferable.

Yet while each minister could see the logic of transfer, none could mobilise the political momentum. The Foreign Office's longstanding wimpishness, fine when it wants to be left alone, left it embarrassing- ly short of muscle when it needed to push a controversial policy through Downing Street and Westminster. It was simply illiterate in the skulduggery that is second nature to such departments as agriculture or defence. Every time it tried, it was pole-axed by 1,800 kelpers and their sup- porters. The only Foreign Secretary to confront the issue was Anthony Crosland. He realised that negotiations had to be in earnest and was prepared to force a settle- ment through Cabinet to a three-line whip in Parliament. He died too soon.

Most ministers presented by officials with tough options will try to conjure up a third from doing nothing. The Falklands was no exception. By the late 1970s, successive Cabinet defence committees were opting for simple bluff. This approach was chosen explicitly by Mrs Thatcher and Lord Carrington from 1979 to 1982. They pretended to negotiate in good faith, de- nied the islands any additional security (indeed the opposite: Endurance was can- celled) and hoped the Argentines would not notice.

Playing for time makes sense only if there is an end in view. In this case there was not. By mid-1981, Foreign Office officials were so desperate they summoned ministers to a special conference (on 30 June). Embassy messages, briefings and intelligence analysis all predicted the bluff would be called in the second half of 1982, leading to a 'strong likelihood of military action'. That autumn the diplomats — and their junior minister, Nicholas Ridley pleaded with Carrington to take the can- cellation of HMS Endurance back to Cabinet and to lobby hard for transfer on the basis of leaseback.

On 7 September, Carrington rejected their pleading. He told his officials in effect to keep bluffing. The ambassador in Buenos Aires, Anthony Williams, angrily described Carrington's policy (in a letter to his London desk) as 'no strategy beyond a general Micawberism'. He advocated tell- ing Argentina the truth — that negotia- tions were pointless as long as Mrs Thatch- er gave the islanders the right of veto 'and face the consequences'. Williams was told to shut up. Just as Fortress Falklands had been abandoned for fear of rebuff from the Treasury, so even lobbying for leaseback was aban- doned for fear of rebuff from the Whips' Office.

The Foreign Office's Falklands policy failed not because it was unsound but because the department never found the right combination of ministerial forces to implement it. It was not treacherous. It was the logical corollary of successive government policies of imperial and naval retreat. Not to have formulated such a policy would itself have been negligent.

Lord Carrington and his colleagues won plaudits for resigning when the eventual disaster occurred. Though some of them felt let down by their officials towards the end, it was a fair application of the doctrine of ministerial responsibility. It was unfair that Mrs Thatcher, whose cantankerous Cabinet style and financial cheese-paring had so enervated Carrington's reflexes, should get off scot-free. But then it was all a wretched, trivial business, dignified in Mrs Thatcher's case only by the manner of its subsequent correction.

Even five years on, the lesson of the Falklands conflict is banal: that politicians who shut their eyes to hard choices will sooner or later have to face harder ones. Cabinet and Parliament did finally approve one of the two options offered by the Foreign Office to ministers for decision. Unfortunately it was the wrong one, For- tress Falklands, and it cost some £2 billion.

Britain's present South Atlantic policy is heavy on rectitude but light on common sense. The islands may not be part of Argentina today, but one day they will be. The islanders known it. Ministers of all parties know it. The Foreign Office knows it. One day, the Foreign Office will win, but its victory been long in coming.

Simon Jenkins is a columnist on the Sunday Times